Stranded (A stand-alone SF thriller) (The Prometheus Project Book 3) (25 page)

It had taken Ryan’s mom about twenty minutes to find a Med-Pen. Yet Carl’s emotional state had not improved during that time.

What did this mean? Had Carl’s emotional state been worse even than Ryan’s? Was it somehow of a different quality? And if so, why?

And if a Med-Pen had never been used on Carl, would the negative emotional effects of Isis have
ever
worn off?

Ryan’s every instinct told him the answers to these questions were vitally important. As Carl discussed strategy and tactics with the pilot of a jet fighter flying
many miles above Nathaniel Smith—and Michelle Cooper—Ryan’s mind raced.

His mouth dropped open as he came to a startling conclusion. Could it really be true? He needed to think it through. Be
absolutely
sure he was right.

“Alright, Captain McGann,” said Carl. “Arm the missiles. Wait until he’s clear of cars and farmhouses and then commence firing. I repeat, you have a green light to engage. Do you copy?”

“Copy that, sir,” said the captain.

“Stop!” screamed Ryan. “Call it off.”

“Ryan, we’ve been through this,” said Carl irritably, his ear still pressed against the phone. “My decision has been made.”

“No. You don’t understand. Nathaniel isn’t the one behind this.”

Ryan leaned forward intently. “You’re about to bomb the wrong person.”

C
HAPTER
30
Decoy

“H
ave you lost your mind?” said Carl.

Ryan stared at the security chief with a blazing intensity. “Carl, if you’ve ever trusted me before,” he said evenly, “trust me now. You’re about to make a terrible mistake.”

Colonel Carl Sharp looked deep into Ryan’s green eyes and saw nothing but certainty. Ryan and his sister had shown themselves to possess excellent instincts time and again. He made up his mind in an instant.

“Abort, abort, abort!” Carl barked into the receiver. “Stand down, Captain McGann. I repeat, stand down. Do you copy?”

“Copy that, sir. Standing down.”

“Hold position and await further instructions,” said Carl. He reached over and hit the mute button on the phone so the captain couldn’t hear their conversation.
“Only because it’s you, Ryan. Only because it’s you. You had better make your points quickly.”

“Nathaniel is a decoy,” said Ryan breathlessly. “Michelle Cooper isn’t
his
hostage. Nathaniel is
her
hostage.”

Carl tilted his head in confusion. “What?”

“I told you the wildlife of Isis was relentlessly hostile to our expedition. You and I discussed why that might have happened. Well I figured it out. They can receive and transmit a kind of telepathic energy that hits the emotional centers of human brains. It drives us into a rage.
Our
emotional energy does the same to them.”

“Ryan, get to the point. This has nothing to do with your theory that Nathaniel is a decoy,” said Carl.

“It
does,
” insisted Ryan. “Just let me explain. You told me you were in an insane rage on Isis when you shot those creatures. Well everyone on
our
expedition experienced a similar rage.” Ryan spoke as quickly as he could, racing to finish before Carl ran out of patience. “And after you shot the animals, when you were retreating in the tram that day, Mom was in a rage too. She told me. One she couldn’t understand. And Bob Zubrin told me the same thing.”

His mother and Bob had never really said this but Ryan knew from experience that this almost
had
to be true.

Carl nodded. “Now that I think of it, you’re right. Everyone
was
screaming at everyone else. We all acted out of character, even for an emergency. Not just me.”

“What about Michelle Cooper?”

Carl paused, searching his memory. A few seconds later he frowned deeply. “Your mom was yelling that I shouldn’t have shot the last few animals. Michelle leaned over and hissed in my ear that she wished
she
had shot them. Or ripped the things apart with her bare hands.”

“Is that something you would expect Michelle to say?” said Ryan. “No matter what was happening?”

“No,” said Carl, a troubled look coming over his face. “I wouldn’t.” He paused. “I’ve tried to put that day out of my mind. Until you jogged my memory just now, I had forgotten she had even said this.”

“When I was on Isis,” said Ryan, “I couldn’t have been angrier. But this stopped when I got back to Earth. Very quickly. As soon as I removed myself from the field being generated by the Isis animals. It must have been the same for my mother and Bob Zubrin. But it was different for you.” He paused. “How long were you back on Earth before Mom could find a Med-Pen?” asked Ryan, already knowing the answer.

“Fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“You told me your emotional state didn’t improve during that time. And it wasn’t because of the pain. The Med-Pen relieves pain instantly. But you said you didn’t feel emotionally normal until five minutes
after
the device had been used. That’s because the changes in your brain were like an infection, and the Med-Pen took five minutes to cure you.”

Carl considered this. He had to admit Ryan was making some good points. But Nathaniel would be entering a populated area again in eight minutes. Carl’s window of opportunity was closing fast. “Ryan, I need to order the strike.”

“Just a little longer,” said Ryan, and then he hastily continued. “The way I figure it there are two levels of crazy you can get from the animals of Isis. The first level is just from the energy traveling through the air and hitting your brain. The second level is far more intense. It’s when you are actually
touching
one of them when their hatred explodes. Like both you and Michelle were doing. You stepped on one of the creatures. Michelle was resting her feet on one of them. When their hate-filled, poisonous emotional energy surged, you two received it full blast through your legs. You both got massive doses through this point of contact. Far more potent than if it had traveled through the air.”

“Hold on,” said Carl. He un-muted the phone. “Captain McGann, are you still in position?”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“Good. Continue to circle and maintain your position,” he said and then muted the phone once again. He nodded at Ryan to continue.

“It’s easier to think of this energy as an infection,” said Ryan. “The rest of your expedition received a small dose that went away when they got back to Earth. You and Michelle Cooper received an
enormous
dose that
seared your brains. Changed your wiring so much that the infection became permanent. So just leaving Isis alone wasn’t enough to cure the two of you like it was for the rest of your group. But
you
were treated with a Med-Pen. Michelle Cooper never was.”

“So you’re saying she was infected on Isis but never cured.” Carl thought about this for a few seconds and then shook his head. “It doesn’t fly. I’ve been around her since. She’s not in a constant rage.”

Ryan paused in thought. “Her mind probably couldn’t take the constant anger and hatred,” he said. “It drove her insane. Insane enough to experiment with the Enigma Cube. Insane enough to plot to steal it. The insanity took the place of the pure hatred. But not entirely. Have you ever seen her smile, even once, since you returned from Isis?”

Carl shook his head. “Never,” he admitted. “And before that she smiled and laughed often.”

“And don’t forget, what she said into your ear on Isis is proof she had turned totally savage. That’s because she had been severely infected with this incompatible emotional energy. From then on she became a much different person.”

Carl’s eyes narrowed as he considered what Ryan had said. “It’s an interesting theory Ryan. But you could still be wrong.”

“I’m
not
. Our Isis expedition returned to a sabotaged
tram and Michelle Cooper and Nathaniel Smith were gone. One of them left a note. A
typed
note. Michelle could have written it just as easily as Nathaniel could have. She could have easily forged his signature at the end. None of us would know any better. She wrote the note to throw us off the trail.”

Carl glanced anxiously at his watch but said nothing.

“Michelle joined the team four months ago. Regan and I met her and she seemed to really like us. She treated us like heroes for having defeated Tezoc. She knew every last detail about what had happened. Exactly what Tezoc had tried to do, and how he had done it. I told you the letter writer also knew a lot about Tezoc. Wanted to copy his strategies.”

“Nathaniel could have known just as much about Tezoc as she did,” pointed out Carl.

“Maybe,” said Ryan. “But the strategy Tezoc is best known for is using exactly this kind of decoy.”

Ryan could tell that Carl was almost convinced. He quickly pressed ahead. “Then she went from really liking me and Regan to really hating us. Just like that. We didn’t know it, but it was just after she had returned from Isis! Exactly three months ago. She had changed! Ask Alyssa and Kelsey. They said the same thing. As of three months ago—exactly—they almost never saw her. And when they did she was a
nightmare
.”

Ryan leaned forward. “They never saw her because
she spent every night experimenting with the Enigma Cube. She was a nightmare because Isis had turned her into a monster.” Ryan shook his head adamantly. “The timing isn’t just a coincidence.”

Carl considered everything Ryan had said. It did seem to fit together perfectly, like a tight jigsaw puzzle. And Nathaniel had never added up. He aced the lie-detector test, and when Carl had checked his background, people said he was a saint. Kind to animals. Opposed to guns and any kind of violence. Donated his time to charitable causes. No psychopath could mask their true nature that effectively for that long. The same was true of Michelle Cooper. By all accounts she was a wonderful human being. But if Isis had truly made her insane, this would explain it.

Still, as good a case as Ryan made, he didn’t have a single shred of hard evidence.

But as Carl thought about it further, he realized Ryan had all the hard evidence he needed. The evidence was Carl himself. Carl had been on Isis, and he remembered with horrible clarity how he had felt before being treated with the Med-Pen. As if all the hatred and fear in the world had been bottled up and concentrated inside of him. He knew from firsthand experience what Isis could do to someone. These memories alone didn’t necessarily mean that Ryan was right. There could be other possible explanations for his temporary insanity. But when combined with the brilliant circumstantial evidence Ryan
had presented, Carl was now convinced of the truth of Ryan’s arguments to the very depths of his soul.

Carl un-muted the phone. “Captain McGann,” he said. “Return to base. I repeat, return to base. We are scrubbing the mission.”

“Roger that,” said the captain. “Turning around and heading for home.”

Ryan let out a huge sigh of relief as Carl hung up the phone. “Thanks Carl. I swear you’re doing the right thing.”

“I know I am,” said Carl, “and it’s you I should be thanking—for stopping me from doing the
wrong
thing.”

The head of security spent a few minutes reviewing information he thought might be useful to Ryan and then asked him to continue his analysis.

“Here’s what I think happened,” said Ryan. “Michelle didn’t count on Dr. Harris being there when she tried to steal the Enigma Cube. Shooting him wasn’t part of her plan. But stealing the Cube and traveling with it to Isis was. She must have had it in her backpack, along with the letter she had written beforehand.”

Ryan stood and tilted his head toward the ceiling as he tried to recreate her plan in his mind.

“So the trams stop and she tosses the tape-recorder into the forest. When we go after it she takes Nathaniel hostage, sabotages one of the trams, and leaves the note. Then, either because they picked up on her hostile emotional
state and attacked her, or just for fun, she shoots four Isis animals. We found their bodies when we were making our way back to the tram.”

Carl rose from his chair. “We need to go topside,” he said. “Let’s continue this as we walk.”

“The letter makes it clear Nathaniel is responsible,” said Ryan as they exited Carl’s office and the security building and began walking the short distance to the Prometheus entrance. “If this happened under normal circumstances everyone would question why Nathaniel would write it and give himself away—give the nature of the
Enigma Cube
away. But no one does in this case because the letter also makes it clear he plans to strand the expedition on Isis forever. So it won’t matter if he reveals his plans in every detail, no one can do anything about it.”

“But Michelle never intended to capture Prometheus,” noted Carl. “Meaning she always knew that the expedition would eventually be rescued, after all.”

“Right. Michelle needed everyone to think Nathaniel had wanted to capture Prometheus but had changed his plans. That he had made a mistake. That the expedition was very lucky to get rescued. But it wouldn’t have been luck. Michelle was
counting
on them coming back. She
needed
them to return.”

Carl rubbed his chin once again. “Right,” he said slowly, as the full extent of Michelle Cooper’s deception began to sink in. “So they could identify Nathaniel as
the villain.” He shook his head at the sheer audacity of her plan. “And her as the poor hostage.”

Ryan nodded. “Exactly. She didn’t count on the animals becoming savage or the river of lava. She thought it was a harmless planet. So she was sure that once Prometheus was back online, sooner or later someone would realize the Isis group was missing and bring them back.”

They stepped through the Prometheus entrance and into the manmade cavern.

“So she uses the returned Isis group to frame Nathaniel,” said Ryan, “and now she has her decoy. Everyone is hunting for the wrong person. Which is brilliant enough. But if I’m guessing the rest correctly, her strategy was more than brilliant. It was
genius
. A strategy Tezoc himself would have been proud of. All she has to do is have a merc continue to hold Nathaniel hostage. Then she can pretend to escape. Or tell us Nathaniel let her go. In either case, she could come up with some clever insight that would lead us to where he was hiding.”